M031 - Embrace the Darkness

For a story involving blinded crewmembers of a ship on a planet with no sun, this episode had a lot of silence. Blindness is logical audio drama disability since it just gives a natural excuse for the characters to have things described, but when it is followed up by stretches of mysterious noises and ominous movements it loses some of its narrative value.

The reasons behind the blindness, and for the lack of a sun, are slowly revealed. In the meantime we are introduced to a pair of blinded space travellers who fit the unfortunate sci-fi horror movie mould of the depressed and the irrational. Nether are particularly good archetypes, which is why they are usually killed off in the middle. No so in this case, but by the end the story has resolved in a satisfying way and put forward at least a little bit of thoughtful philosophy, albeit nothing as deep as some Eighth Doctor stories have.